Death and Fallibility in the Psychoanalytic Encounter

"Mortal Gifts is a necessary book—necessary for analysts and necessary for the analyses they conduct. In it Ellen Pinsky addresses a long-neglected issue in the practice of psychoanalysis: the analyst’s failure to include in the very fiber of the analysis the fact of his or her mortality. This omission is not a minor matter. It arises from deep-seated fears in the analyst that prevent him or her from being fully present in the analysis—facing one’s mortality is an integral part of being emotionally present. The book is intelligent, honest, beautifully written, and emotionally moving. What it has to teach is an essential part of the process of becoming an analyst."-Thomas Ogden, author of Reclaiming Unlived Life and This Art of Psychoanalysis.

"Pinsky’s eloquent, absorbing and provocative book challenges our comfortable assumptions about what the analyst means to the patient. She corners that elusive experience by scrutinizing – sometimes quite severely – certain limiting situations, such as intermittency of sessions, boundary violations, and the analyst’s death in treatment. Pinsky’s rich literary references further enlarge our sense of what’s at stake, and the awful responsibility of the transference as it touches on issues of life and loss and the nature of human reality. Her bold and unsettling inquiry goes to the heart of psychoanalysis."-Lawrence Friedman, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical School.

"In an arresting prose style, Ellen Pinsky provides evocative reconsiderations on the fundamental principles of psychoanalysis. She draws our attention to the analyst’s vulnerability and its effect on the psychoanalytic process. Her perspective is both humane and respectful as she poses ethical dilemmas inherent in psychoanalysis due to the analyst’s mortality and human limitations. Reading these linked essays will lead clinicians to a deeper and renewed appreciation of the role of the analyst and the nature of psychoanalytic situation."-Judy Kantrowitz, training and supervising analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and author of The Patient's Impact on the Analyst: Writing about Patients: responsibilities, risks, and ramifications and Myths of Termination: what patients can teach analyst about endings.

"In these accessible, poignantly evocative, and stunningly incisive essays, Ellen Pinsky explores the mortal gifts of love and death as they shape each clinical psychoanalytic engagement. She shows technique to be the face of what is most human in humanism, the psychoanalytic situation as a structured invitation that awakens the mobility of desires of falling in love and falling in hate, exposing the immense ethical burden of analyzing. Pulling the reader into a conversation with the analytic masters, this work is an admirable complement to Freud’s classical papers on psychoanalytic technique."-Warren S. Poland, M.D.,author of Melting the Darkness.

"Ellen Pinsky’s gorgeously written Mortal Gifts creates wonder and despair. Pinsky describes the fundamental humanness of psychoanalysis through incisive, wide-ranging, and playful literary and theoretical portrayals, always remembering the extraordinary self-knowledge, internal freedom, and sense of being that, perhaps, only analysis can provide. Yet she troubles the reader, asking whether together with this promise there has been, since Freud, something foundationally unethical in the psychoanalytic attitude. Along with human fallibility and mortality, have lack of empathy and the analyst’s narcissism historically pervaded analytic work?"-Nancy J. Chodorow, author, The Reproduction of Mothering, The Power of Feelings, and other writings.

"Inspiring. Ellen Pinsky’s essays remind me of why I am interested in psychoanalysis. Loss is the perennial theme, but Pinsky’s writing, with its unusually evocative clarity, has something remarkable to add: that there might be something enlivening or intriguing about the inevitable losses in a life is much more than a new note."-Adam Phillips

"Mortal Gifts is a necessary book—necessary for analysts and necessary for the analyses they conduct. In it Ellen Pinsky addresses a long-neglected issue in the practice of psychoanalysis: the analyst’s failure to include in the very fiber of the analysis the fact of his or her mortality. This omission is not a minor matter. It arises from deep-seated fears in the analyst that prevent him or her from being fully present in the analysis—facing one’s mortality is an integral part of being emotionally present. The book is intelligent, honest, beautifully written, and emotionally moving. What it has to teach is an essential part of the process of becoming an analyst."-Thomas Ogden, author of Reclaiming Unlived Life and This Art of Psychoanalysis.

"Pinsky’s eloquent, absorbing and provocative book challenges our comfortable assumptions about what the analyst means to the patient. She corners that elusive experience by scrutinizing – sometimes quite severely – certain limiting situations, such as intermittency of sessions, boundary violations, and the analyst’s death in treatment. Pinsky’s rich literary references further enlarge our sense of what’s at stake, and the awful responsibility of the transference as it touches on issues of life and loss and the nature of human reality. Her bold and unsettling inquiry goes to the heart of psychoanalysis."-Lawrence Friedman, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical School.

"In an arresting prose style, Ellen Pinsky provides evocative reconsiderations on the fundamental principles of psychoanalysis. She draws our attention to the analyst’s vulnerability and its effect on the psychoanalytic process. Her perspective is both humane and respectful as she poses ethical dilemmas inherent in psychoanalysis due to the analyst’s mortality and human limitations. Reading these linked essays will lead clinicians to a deeper and renewed appreciation of the role of the analyst and the nature of psychoanalytic situation."-Judy Kantrowitz, training and supervising analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and author of The Patient's Impact on the Analyst: Writing about Patients: responsibilities, risks, and ramifications and Myths of Termination: what patients can teach analyst about endings.

"In these accessible, poignantly evocative, and stunningly incisive essays, Ellen Pinsky explores the mortal gifts of love and death as they shape each clinical psychoanalytic engagement. She shows technique to be the face of what is most human in humanism, the psychoanalytic situation as a structured invitation that awakens the mobility of desires of falling in love and falling in hate, exposing the immense ethical burden of analyzing. Pulling the reader into a conversation with the analytic masters, this work is an admirable complement to Freud’s classical papers on psychoanalytic technique."-Warren S. Poland, M.D.,author of Melting the Darkness.

"Ellen Pinsky’s gorgeously written Mortal Gifts creates wonder and despair. Pinsky describes the fundamental humanness of psychoanalysis through incisive, wide-ranging, and playful literary and theoretical portrayals, always remembering the extraordinary self-knowledge, internal freedom, and sense of being that, perhaps, only analysis can provide. Yet she troubles the reader, asking whether together with this promise there has been, since Freud, something foundationally unethical in the psychoanalytic attitude. Along with human fallibility and mortality, have lack of empathy and the analyst’s narcissism historically pervaded analytic work?"-Nancy J. Chodorow, author, The Reproduction of Mothering, The Power of Feelings, and other writings.

"Inspiring. Ellen Pinsky’s essays remind me of why I am interested in psychoanalysis. Loss is the perennial theme, but Pinsky’s writing, with its unusually evocative clarity, has something remarkable to add: that there might be something enlivening or intriguing about the inevitable losses in a life is much more than a new note."-Adam Phillips